


Braindamage by DasTier

by hornblowerfic_archivist



Category: Hornblower (TV), Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adult Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-29
Updated: 2007-09-29
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:30:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6079437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hornblowerfic_archivist/pseuds/hornblowerfic_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cyberpunk AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Hornblowerfic.com](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Hornblowerfic.com). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in January 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [Hornblowerfic.com collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hornblowerfic/profile).

Inner circuit perimeter safe.  
Opening IRC channel #...  
Logging Surgeon!Clive  
Logging HNelsonH  
Relay chat transcript decrypted by deckjockey DeadWellard.

“…Hello, boy.”  
“My greetings, doctor.”  
“How many times should I tell you not to go by this tag? That’s presumptuous to use, particularly with me. After all, it was I who designed Nelson 1.01. and 2.02. Beta versions, all right, but they were…”  
“I’m sorry, doctor.”  
“…screwing things up royally for the Corp. You have yet to grow up to match them, boy.”  
“I will.”  
“Undoubtedly. How are your implants doing, btw? Have you linked to their skyballs?”  
“I have, but the connection broke after a shortwire.”  
“That’s bad, man, that’s bad. Come see me tomorrow around midnight? I’ll be in the bunker, the usual location. Don’t forget to use your shoes, especially concerning your SIN. Logging off, Nelson-to-be :D”  
“Good-bye, Surgeon.”

/Surgeon!Clive logged off/

HNelsonH pinging the Corporation site till…

/transmission mangled; end of decryption/

***

‘Monseigneur?’

He stretches in his vast leather chair and turns to look at the messenger.

‘Yes?’

‘We’ve been registering a sort of…sneaking probes at our network security border this evening. We suspect it’s the same visitor.’

He likes his chair; he likes the way their sizes mismatch, and how the leather-dressed cavity engulfs him whole in its fleshy embrace.

‘What is his target?’

The messenger shimmers trying to become invisible at will, but that’s futile: the Emperor doesn’t need scanners and infrared vision to pin down a wrongdoer with a piercing stare.

‘We suspect that it’s our latest software development.’

‘Waterloo?’

The messenger nods reservedly, no doubt reluctant to admit the dangerous truth.

‘How far in has he gone this time?’

‘Up to…I suppose he’s nearing the Hougoumont battery.’

‘Hmm.’ He spins in his chair full 180 degrees and stares out of a huge, wall-turned-window opening of glass and thin steel frame into the dark abyss of the space above the city streets. The neon glow of the city gives the steel a cold shine, but at least the sounds from below don’t reach here, except for the choppers flying, which he doesn’t mind – as long as it’s his choppers.

‘Monseigneur?’ The messenger dares to remind him about his presence. ‘What are we to do with the intruder?’

He takes his time torturing the poor clerk with uncertainty and idly contemplates commanding the man to log on to the network and trace the spy all by himself. How long will it take for the employee to be online to have his brains boil over? Not too long, judging from what he’s come to know about these hacker tech scum: without proper training and protection, usually a quarter of an hour is enough to have one’s eyeballs turn into fine blind porcelain.

‘Just let him be. Allow him to roam freely, but watch him from afar – let’s permit him to feel secure for a while.’

He might have elaborated on his plan by saying that this intruder couldn’t be more than a test approach performed by somebody low-cost, somebody dispensable behind whom a bigger fish must be lurking. He says nothing of the kind, though, not to lead the clerk into any false assumptions about the [un]importance of his mission: after all, every little detail counts.

He has learnt a lot about the intruder just by reading the schedule and route of his logs into the Corporation’s system. A creepy, secretive, obscure kind of man, pragmatic enough to fly a false flag, which sets him apart from the usual arrogant hacker folk who are too proud of their overblown names to hide behind a mask; he seems to be fully conversant in the Corporation’s own programming language, and even a squad of cryptographers failed to find any peculiar alien accent in his online communications. The man read, and continues to read, as part of the inner network.

The clerk, finding that no more orders are to follow, bows and leaves, still sweating in his immaculate suit. Left alone, the Emperor turns back to face the table and activates his own private terminal. The red mark pointing to the intruder hovers like a subliminal beep of danger in the corner of the screen.

He opens the mail client and types with fast precision. He is economical with words in the same manner the burglar is thrifty with leaving clues about his identity.

“Hi,

glad to see you again, my dear fiend. Hope you have good time poking around my empire. Be my guest.

Regards,

N. B.’

***

When he disconnects, the metal inlets in his temples feel searing hot, and he can almost see the silver material turn red with the overload. He hates it when it happens, and he knows exactly why it’s been happening lately: the messages in his incoming mail, the short, laconic triumphant dots in a conversation, this is what sends his brain into forced reload every time and throws him out of the system better than any defence of the Corporation could even aspire to.

A part of him seethes with anger and helplessness, and yet another cringes in animalistic, bent on survival fear at the uncomfortable thought about what Bonaparte’s full regal signature will do to him if just his initials can leave him squirming in agony for hours.

Doctor Clive’s invitation couldn’t have come in handier. If things progress in this direction, HNelsonH will meet the same fate that has already served Nelson 1. and 2. with a fine brain haemorrhage and left them babbling incoherently in neat sound-proof wards down in the doctor’s bunker. The ‘beta’ part in their names is poor excuse; he’s not sure the alpha version would have done any better.

The man known in renegade cyberspace as HNelsonH, the Mad British Gentleman, or, alternatively, as just Horatio among rare friends, leaves the room and merges with the crowd of personnel streaming out of the office precisely at the time their working hours end. The world of IT is built around the notion of precision: a second too soon, or a second too late are able to crash a programmed sequence’s execution, bring down the company’s sales index, or have you logged firmly into the Napoleon Corporation security protocol, which would be really awkward considering his recent activities.

He drives out of the parking lot and joins the flow of vehicles heading towards the entertainment centre, which suits his secretive intentions just fine. The doctor is circumspect enough to have located his operating base in the heart of a busy lair of night-time bustle, and the labs on the upper floor of his bunker producing custom crafted DNA, biological tissues and brain grafts are better than any sophisticated sham because they are real. There is a steady flow of customers, and besides being a cover for the real core of the base, the labs provide solid income that is not to be neglected.

He stops midway to buy some cheap snacks from a street vendor, goes back to his car to eat without paying attention to the taste, and then changes out of his official suit into a more relaxed attire of a trench coat, boots, and sunglasses, all in comfortable black monochrome. The shades feel especially welcome for his sore eyes, which have been watering already from the strain.

The feeling of discomfort goes deeper than just his eyes. He can still sense the weak tingling pricks of electricity going down each and every of the nerves in his body, which results in uncontrollable muscle spasms and makes him nearly lose the grip on the wheel a few times. The Corp.’s system runs on higher voltage, and it takes a long time to damp the waves of vibration shaking his body even after he’s disconnected.

And among these vibrations, Bonaparte is like a dazzling ball of fire, a blinding meteor of light forever imprinted into his retina.

“Horatio!”

DeadWellard greets him with a broad smile on his pale face. Despite his young age, the boy’s features are ragged and weary, and his hands shake just a tiny bit beyond his self-control.

"Wellard," acknowledges HNelsonH and can’t help but smile back at the sincerity of the greeting.

The ‘Dead’ part in Wellard’s name did come at a price. Horatio remembers the time when the young man, then only a boy, came aboard their small crew; headed by Sawyer, it was a mad enterprise, of which Surgeon!Clive is a representative relic. Sawyer was paranoid even towards his own crew members, but his universal distrust did strengthen the security of the group, that much had to be given to him. Wellard was, to be frank, cruelly miscast for a team like that, and Sawyer’s regular procedures nearly drained the boy, both physically and mentally. He should have been wise and relocated while he still could, to someplace less belligerent, like the fabled Pellew enclave, the Indefatigable, which was rumoured to be a data haven of exceptional wellbeing.

Clive meets him at the doors of the elevator, the opium-laden pipe habitually clasped in his hand and the old, greasy wig sitting on his head at an equally habitual wrong angle. There is a story, too, behind this wig, and HNelsonH sometimes thinks about it – only for no longer than a fraction of a minute – and the bald skull hidden under it with the scarred skin covered in ugly chars. Clive has faced a full range attack of the Corp. and survived it, thus proving that it can be done; and let no one hold it against him that he failed to recover Sawyer in that attack.

"How’s life, HH?"

No reply is needed; the dark glasses over his eyes say enough.

"Had another upsetting rendezvous with our tyrant? Well, you know the routine: sit back and… shall we start with the Poincare conjecture?"

He sits down on a steel chair while the doctor walks round him to spread the dark curls at the back of his head and press the sensors against the still hot metal of the implants. The monitors obediently display the fluctuating patterns of his brain, but he doesn’t watch their dance as the elegant stages of solving one mathematical puzzle after another carry him away into the land of order and control.

"Fermat," prompts Clive, his voice unusually gentle.

It continues in this way for a while, until the patterns on the monitor reset, become regular and firm, and the halo of Napoleon’s presence fades from his mind. The doctor disconnects him, checks the timer and lets out no more than a vague sigh.

"You’ve come too close, boy, next time…"

"I know what I’m doing, doctor."

"I would insist, however, that next time you at least take Wellard with you," Clive goes on saying as if he hadn’t been interrupted. "He’s a good navigator despite his seedy appearance. You might not be able to get out of there alone, HH."

Even the thought of dragging Wellard along into the treacherous labyrinth of the Corporation’s network makes Horatio sick. Not that he hasn’t attempted to have a reliable reinforcement before; he still remembers Hales, who accompanied him in one of his early operations, only to end up looking washed out and being perfectly dead, to match his complexion, after the cables left the ports in his implants. Seeing something like that happen again isn’t among the risks he intends to take, even if a guide by his side would indeed prove useful.

"Laudanum?" proposes Clive in a sudden fit of mercy, knowing though that HNelsonH will decline this offer just like he has declined the previous one.


	2. Chapter Two

He is just right for this life. He admits it in a rare moment of freedom from his constant self-doubt. He has been a perfect loner since childhood, a quality conductive to introversion which, in its turn, is indispensable for a good IT professional, regardless of his relationship with the law. Speaking of which, while many choose to stick to one side of it, Horatio has managed to establish a shaky footage between the legal and the criminal, and people who know him in either field believe they know the real HH.  
  
He envies them for their certainty, because he himself doesn’t know which face of him is real.  
  
Perhaps this is what has been keeping him alive. He’s shifting, changing colours, leaking through everyone’s fingers, all the time maintaining ideal isolation from everyone and everything. That’s something you can’t learn; it’s a curse inborn.  
  
Standing on the top platform of the building, at the opposite, underground end of which Clive’s bunker sits like overgrown mycelium, he can see the whole panorama of a benighted London, seemingly more awake than it is ever by daytime and glowing in acid colours. From this vantage point the eye can wander uninhibited and trace the bright radiance of the main data arteries that smoulder under the Thames’ dark waters. The huge, anaconda-like cables run along the riverbed to the Channel where they split into a spider web of communicational highways heading every each way towards the continent.  
  
HH, being a professional in his business, both the official and the other a bit less so, never uses the London portal to enter the network hub. Cinque Ports and their limbs are better suited for the purpose of long travels; but even in that case one can get only as far as a few miles into the Channel. The InfoDams of the Empire glitter in the night like radioactive lines of no trespassing and cut off any outgoing attempt in a devastating, brain-crushing blast of rejection.  
  
He remembers how he tried to bypass them when he was younger, so many times he stopped counting, and each time he was thrown back with a vengeance, just like every other intruder. For the last decade the data blockade of the Islands by the Empire has been a problem of national importance, tackling which was the top priority of all bitheads, employed or freelance.  
  
Now the two opponents have locked each other in a hopeless stalemate where one side can’t go out, but the other can’t go in. The Empire has no control over the inner life of the Islands’ network; the last attempt of the UK to penetrate the blockade was the Victory metamorph, which used its 104 virus modifications to bomb its way almost up to the Finistere citadel, where it was finally detected by N. B.’s system and torn to pieces. Its defeat was seminal, though: rumours have been circulating that a new, multilevel monster of dedicated malware is under way.  
  
The Trafalgar, the strangest loop in all programming history, and so far the only hope of the Islands to ever touch the world again.  
  
It is so tempting to trust the promise of the Trafalgar, its paradoxical nature is the best proof of success since people tend to believe what they can’t understand. He often wishes he could afford the same luxury; he also wishes often that he had become part of the Victory project because that was where true rare natural-born metamorphs like him belonged.  
  
***  
  
The uneven jumble of muzak reverberates through the centre and the air around it, and he can’t hide from it even on the top platform. There’s a never-ending party going on inside, and it has acquired a particularly violent edge since the whisperings started.  
  
N. B. is almost ready to launch a new attack. Have you heard about Waterloo? Have you found a place to run for cover?  
  
He gives the city below one last glance and heads back to the elevator.  
  
***  
  
"The Victory concept is old,’ says Clive through a cloud of sweet-smelling narcotic smoke. ‘The Corp. has boosted its pattern recognition to near perfection."  
  
"Last time I penetrated almost up to Hougoumont."  
  
"So what? You’ve just scratched the surface."  
  
"Its contents prove that Waterloo really exists."  
  
Clive has been twining one of his wig’s curls around his finger absent-mindedly, and now he pulls at the lock with too much force, which makes the wig shift and reveal the burnt out implant on his temple.  
  
"Even if it does, what can you do about it? Get inside? Nonsense, my boy, sheer nonsense. We’d have hard time cleaning the seat of what’s left of you if you try to do that."  
  
"They haven’t even recognised me yet."  
  
Whom is he trying to fool? The message from N.B. himself is the best evidence that he has been noticed, identified, and unmistakably logged into the Corporation’s black list.  
  
On the other hand, who is he to refuse N.B.’s personal invitation to mouse around his empire?  
  
"Plug me in, Surgeon."  
  
***  
  
He goes in through the less busy Tenterden limb. The gateway lets him out into the stream of data that looks outgoing but is in fact circular: the flow, diverted by one of the Dams, will turn back and merge with the inner streams. Sometimes, perhaps when N.B. is feeling particularly generous, the Dams don’t annihilate the prowlers but redirect them randomly to places remote and safe and often entrance-only.  
  
A while ago it stopped to matter for HH which defence mode the Dams are in. True, metamorphic code is now considered obsolete and useless on the whole, but there is still a loop-hole in the perimeter if you go alone, and HH has always made a point of going alone.  
  
The proximity of the Empire’s network greets him with a sharp increase of voltage, and he allows his neurosystem some time to tune to the change. It will get worse the closer to the Corp.’s core he is, and inside it must feel like electrocution; not that anybody has gotten that far and lived to tell the tale.  
  
Familiar landmarks blast and fade in his vision. The big aura of Dover obscures its smaller neighbours but for the vicious shimmer of Goodwin Sands, where each night thousands of recklessly brave and equally stupid virtual travellers meet to perform their cyber-tease of the Dams. That’s why he chose to go by a less popular, though longer route, which finally brings him to a Dam nonetheless.  
  
Here HNelsonH pauses. The data blocking construction in its physical manifestation is a series of magnetic clasps attached to the cables on the Channel’s bottom, but in cyberspace it indeed looks like a wall that towers to the sky and higher. Due to N.B.’s cynical humour the wall is transparent: behind it the Corporation’s minions are shuttling back and forth on their errands.  
  
He hovers near the Dam waiting and evaluating until one of the shuttles seems attractive enough; then he morphs.  
  
***  
  
The Calais hub, as ever, looks cosmopolitan, festive and grand so as to inspire reverence in the Empire’s guests. Contrary to the real pragmatic Calais, its virtual double is a hedonistic heaven of wish-fulfilment, like any port should be. Interactive pleasure for the wary traveller, designer drugs, artistic pornography, the eternal question ‘whadda ya need?’ of the dealers pulsing in the bass beats of an orchestra of instruments – this is the nature of this simulation.  
  
He feels lost in Calais every time he comes here, but it’s the easiest way to enter the Empire since all ports, deep reality or VR-built, survive on smuggling. The conduit of illicit trade carries him inside without extra effort.  
  
This ostensible utopia fades, too, when he moves on into the mainland, and for a while he’s enveloped in relative darkness with only a spark of a nameless backup facility emerging here and there. The trip doesn’t get any smoother though, and he already begins to feel the network’s high tension bite into his nerve endings. It produces funny sensations, as if he’s grown an extra limb, or lost one of his own and all there’s left is only a smarting wound.  
  
If DeadWellard has mapped his last trips correctly, this is the primary line of defence near Hougoumont, and since he’s passed through it before, he sees no problem in repeating the trick now.  
  
And right after Hougoumont has flashed past him with its array of anti-virus batteries, he falls into a new trap.  
  
***  
  
Defence is built on pain. Inflicting pain is universally recognised as the best way to communicate the forbidding message. That’s why the trap is so inconspicuous, and he falls into it head first and at full speed because there is no pain.  
  
There is, however, a sensation far funnier than he’s ever experienced. Something between tickling and nibbling, a crawling touch over his skin, disorienting because it comes from every part of his body at once; the sensations build up until his whole body is trembling in delightful spasms. Gasping for air, he doubles up and presses his hands first to his stomach and then lower, between his legs, where the weird frequency of the network’s vibrations resonates through his member.  
  
He has stopped. He doesn’t know any more where to go. There is not a single coherent thought in his head now, and he’d gladly spend his lifetime in this place, deep inside the Corp.’s space, in a virtual land of endless pleasure. He orgasms over and over, peaks coming in a fast spindle, until he feels his body is about to explode.  
  
"How are you liking it, my fiend?"  
  
N.B. appears before his blinded eyes like the brightest of flashes he’s been seeing. The still rational part of HNelsonH’s brain prompts that this is nothing but an image delivered by a neurotransmitter, a simulation, a mock-up, while the other parts that have already said good-bye to sanity remember this is how the Surgeon once described Sawyer’s last moments before his brain tissues began to fizz.  
  
No wonder Sawyer refused to leave and struggled wildly when the doctor attempted to pull him out.  
  
"I heartily invite you to stay here. This place will be all yours, my clever little spy."  
  
He squirms in the immersive dark, at once penetrating and being penetrated by unseen entities, and the barrage of stimulations milk him dry. A large, oil-skinned tentacle moves inside his brain in slow, rhythmic frictions, disrupts his memory chains and appropriates what’s left. Centipede N.Bs, hundreds of, crawl over his skin, each of their many legs sending him into blissful agony.  
  
"Now, handsomely," says a strange worried voice inside his skull, and all of a sudden he’s catapulted out of the Waterloo, N.B.’s control and the Empire network altogether.


	3. Chapter Three

"You look seasick," comments the same strange voice with curiosity somewhere nearby.

"He always does," grumbles Clive and lifts the tension somewhat by giving one of his doped chuckles. "Wellard, give him something to drink, will you?"

Water is being poured into his mouth, and HNelsonH chokes, trying hard not to be indeed sick in front of his crew members.

"Better?" asks the stranger with real concern, so unlike the doctor’s usual happy-go-lucky nonchalance.

"Yes…" His throat feels sore, and it takes him some time to realise it must be because of his screams of agony – no, it was pleasure, even if it felt the same – inside the Waterloo. "In a way."

"I’m Bush," says the stranger and thus ceases to be strange, as is expected to happen after introductions; only it doesn’t work so well with HNelsonH this time.

He forces his vision to focus on the new man: shorter than himself, the regular trench coat replaced by a more practical leather jacket, aviator goggles pushed up to the forehead to reveal exceptionally blue eyes.

"Which one, senior or junior?"

"Neither." Bush laughs good-naturedly at the common joke of the Islanders about the U.S.’ perpetual president duo.

"That passes as humour, HH?" Clive makes a stern face and professionally lifts the patient’s eyelid to check for any irreversible change. "William is from the Temeraire team. It’s your luck he happened to be passing by the same route."

"How did you get inside Waterloo?" It’s the question HNelsonH has been meaning to ask since the moment that voice first spoke into his ear. Bush only shrugs and makes a vaguely apologetic gesture with his large hands.

"I just hacked my way through."

***

"So, the Waterloo project really exists," Clive states what now is the obvious. "That is, unless you broke into N.B.’s personal sex shop, boy."

"No, it was indeed one of the defence mechanisms," Bush hurries to disambiguate, embarrassed for no apparent reason. "It’s the Placenoit Hollow, a nasty place, if you ask me."

"HH thought differently," the doctor mumbles into his pipe and looks at each of them in turn. DeadWellard exhibits what can almost count as a blush if only his face were capable of such colouring.

"The Napoleon Corporation has rich defences. Running into its curaisser robohounds is something I’ll never forget, and there’s the Grande Batterie which can give you nightmares…"

"You’ve moved in that far?" asks HH increduously, to which Bush replies with another of his sorry gestures.

"It is my assignment…"

"Given by the original Nelson, mind you, HH," Clive puffs at his drug pipe, obviously enjoying the confusion on his crew members’ faces. "We’ve been chatting a bit with our guest while you were lying unconscious after your night of self-love. The Temeraire gang are the main testers of the Trafalgar development."

***

Everybody has heard, at least once, about Nelson and Wellington, the best deckers of the generation and the biggest rogue nuisance in all of the Napoleon Corproration’s history. Unfortunately, the failure of the Victory project brought about Nelson’s untimely death, and he was mourned nationwide, albeit strictly unofficially, as befits a noble pirate. Wellington has continued to be on the loose still, and inventive rumours have assigned him the honourable supervision of the Trafalgar – Nelson’s brainchild, which his friend and partner has been bent on bringing to life ever since his death.

While political and economical aspirations of the Islands have slowly adjusted to see the Trafalgar as not only a risky hacker enterprise but a possibility of great potential as well, the people behind the project have long become national heroes. Today, just like ten years ago, every computer nerd sees Nelson and Wellington as role models, and every true lonely wirehead dreams about an ideal partnership that’d mimick the connection and cooperation in the famous duet.

"I told you not to use that alias, HH. There are people who wouldn’t be so easily impressed," Clive winks mischievously, first to HH, then to Bush, and HNelsonH blushes with much more success than Wellard can even hope for.

And the Temeraire group, responsible for a backup of the Victory project that was to launch if the first attempt failed, is no less famous. And that Bush guy is from that team. DeadWellard looks disgustingly sympathetic, which makes HNelsonH cringe, even if the boy means well.

"Tell him about Nelson one day, will you, Bush?"

Somebody, someday, will definitely kill Surgeon!Clive in the most cruel manner, that much HH knows for certain.

"Temeraire was to back up Victory in the raid, but once we saw that the metamorph code wasn’t working as we planned, the second part was retained," Bush explains dutifully, and HH silently thanks the man for being thick-skinned enough to ignore Clive. "It won’t be too much of a surprise if I tell you that now it’s part of the Trafalgar project?"

"No, it won’t."

"Yes, it will."

Clive coughs deliberately, scratches under his wig and shrugs at HNelsonH.

"I told Horatio that metamorphs are universally discounted now, and he’s been feeling unwanted. Bush, his name is Horatio, can you imagine?"

Bush carries on as if the surgeon’s words are redundant data, and only his eyes display a brief shade of a smile.

"I didn’t say the metamorphic code didn’t work; it just didn’t work as we planned. Which brings us to the reason why I’m here."

***

"The Placenoit Hollow is impossible to bypass. It resurfaces at the most unexpected of moments, right when you think you’ve fought your way through all other traps."

They are walking slowly in the crowded street that looks no different regardless of the time of the day – or night. Now it’s dawning, but there’s still time before the morning shift will start and pull the reluctant employees out of the dens, only to be replaced some hours later by the tired, hungry, and deprived night shift.

"You say, it’s impossible to bypass; it means one has to go through it."

"You’re good at dead reckoning, are you?" Bush changes the subject suddenly and looks at HH again with that touch of a smile on his face. "That’s how you’ve managed to progress that far into the Waterloo. I must apologise for having interrupted your expedition, but things started to look bad, and I asked Clive to connect me..."

"It couldn't have been more timely. Thank you."

As it always happens with him when he’s being complimented, HH feels the urge to deny everything. He should tell Bush about the daze Calais always leaves him in, so that he just tumbles forward without realising what he’s going through; that’s how he got to Hougoumont the first time, not even knowing what it really was.

He tells Bush nothing, though, because even if he did, the man that goes hacking through the Napoleon Corp.’s network wouldn’t probably believe him. He suspects that men like Bush just move ahead step by step with bulldog determination, and all the time know perfectly well where they are, and can’t imagine that anyone can act any differently.

"So, what about passing through it?"

"Can’t be done. And believe me, I’ve tried."

HH believes, without a shade of doubt. Placenoit, the trap of life-long orgasmic ecstasy bordering on a perpetual epileptic fit, still haunts him. For once he’s thankful to Clive for having covered up his body with a clean sheet to conceal the many various liquids soaking his clothes. His acquaintance with Bush was awkward enough; it could have been worse if he appeared before the stranger drenched in his own biological waste.

It takes HH another second to shatter his self-illusion: if Bush has tried to pass Placenoit, he probably knows quite well what traces it leaves on you.

"Then, the Trafalgar project has no future?"

"Well, not exactly that bad. By the way, I never could understand metamorphs. This duplicity, the way they assume any appearance they wish…" Bush sighs with regret. "I must be too cautious for that. And that’s why the Temeraire has decided to seek you out."

HNelsonH doesn’t comment and only listens on attentively, inviting further explanation; he is cautious, too.

"You cannot pass Placenoit alone. As you’ve seen, it makes you extremely… self-centred if you stay there long enough, up to a point where the world ceases to exist. But there is a chance, a slight possibility that two can pass through it successfully." Bush stops abruptly in his tracks and turns to face HNelsonH. "Will you return there with me?"

***

"Have I told you this is the chair Sawyer died in?"

Clive, busy cleaning and rigging HNelsonH’s implants, still finds time to cheer him up in his typical manner.

"Don’t look at me like that, lad, it only proves you’re logging in via solid equipment. The technical part of it is still fully functioning, contrary to its human component…"

Bush keeps silent throughout the whole banter that usually accompanies each of HNelsonH’s departures into the Corp.’s system. He has refused help in his preparations, and spent a few hours connecting Temeraire’s own cyberware to the bunker’s terminal with a meticulousness that inspired in HH a feeling of security he found very pleasant. Just as pleasant, in fact, as watching Bush’s confident hands manage the difficult plexus of cables and wires with the comforting ease of experience. The man clearly knew what he was doing.

At last Bush leans back in his chair and turns to look at HNelsonH with a twinkle in his eye before lowering his aviator goggles. Clive, standing between them with a cable in either hand, all set to plug them in, doesn’t allow this moment of companionship to last.

"Ready, my boys? Then bon voyage!"

***

He has been worrying that a trip in somebody’s company would feel weird; it definitely should, to anyone so used to travelling alone as he is. Still, Bush’s presence is unobtrusive and strangely reassuring, which makes time and space fly faster past them than he ever remembers it happen from his earlier, solitary trips. The InfoDam is nothing but a membrane, Calais is but a bright spot of no annoyance, and the highways of the Empire’s system are like open, navigable rivers.

They don’t see Hougoumont, though, at all, and that gives HNelsonN a moment of panic before he remembers Bush’s words that the Waterloo defence perimeter isn’t linear. He should have asked how cuirassier robohounds look like, or what in fact the Grande Batterie is…

"Here it comes," says Bush, and his voice sounds dangerously shaky.

A myriad of hot electric stings proves to HH that his companion is right. The Placenoit Hollow doesn’t exist, either in deep reality or in cyberspace, which fully justifies its name; it is nothing but an experience, and it only takes place inside the head of anyone unlucky to trigger it. This HH knows, and this is what he tells himself but to little avail because right now a long, narrow, snaky tongue is worming its way up his leg and coils around his member, anchoring him in his own needs and urges.

It’s remarkable how forcibly the body dictates its will, he thinks absent-mindedly; how unconditional is its surrender to sudden pleasure when it has been readying itself for an assault of pain. It’s N.B.’s vilest trick, based exactly on that very duplicity metamorphs are proud of, as Bush said…

Wait, who is Bush?

The snake’s tongue loosens its grip, and he can almost hear somebody hiss in anger in the distance.

"Think of me," says yet somebody else, the same stranger who has forced him to eject himself from the network last time. Last time it saved his life, and now he gladly obeys.

For several difficult, uneven heartbeats he thinks it’s not working. His body still yearns for a touch, a contact with anything, even N.B.’s ghastly insects. He’s suspended one step away from climax, and it hurts to lack one last push needed to cross the edge. He thinks he can hear his own desperate pleas for release through the heavy throbbing of blood in his overfilled veins.

When the Hollow offers him another simulation, he doesn’t hesitate to estimate the potential danger and embraces the new phantom with all the power that the digital rendition of his body possesses.

This time it’s not a snake’s tongue but a hand that feels treacherously human. It could be even N.B.’s hand, for all he cares, because right now he is a slave to his bodily needs, and his body needs more of this pressure, more of this tight grip that still feels gentle to his stone-hard member. A random thought flashes through his mind that it’s so much like Placenoit to give tenderness when one would expect anguish; and another thought tells him that his lungs are running short of air in this happy torturous anticipation that must have lasted hours.

He doesn’t care. He lets his body twine around the phantom so tightly it starts to feel they’re merging, and the frequency of their vibrations mounts higher, surpassing even the high tension of the Corp.’s system. And then he does explode, taking Placenoit and its delightful pitfalls of flesh along into a momentary blast, after which there’s only darkness.

"Breathe," says the phantom in Bush’s voice, and he obeys again.

***

"It can’t be that big."

It’s all HNelsonH can say when the Waterloo project, the most treasured malware development of the Napoleon Corporation, opens before them in its full glory.

"Fifty…Sixty… Seventy three thousand clusters," Bush sums up the calculations he’s been busy with for a while, "and each probably carries a virus type of its own."

It wouldn’t surprise HH if Bush happened to have a notebook about him, even in cyberspace, into which he’d be jotting down the numbers in neat, orderly columns. Ridiculous as this image may seem, it is a much needed distraction that allows his mind to re-organise itself around things that are more pragmatic and less…

And it’s the first words they exchange since the Placenoit sentinel.

Waterloo helps them both to complete the embarrassing process of forcing the recent memory into the darkest closets of their minds. Everything else is tiny in comparison; N.B. could have left it unguarded, since its range alone would reduce any nosy spy into a paralysis of dumb-struck horror.

"Our network can’t fend it off. Not in its present state. Not in its future state of development, at least for a decade, and N.B. isn’t likely to wait for that long."

This simple and deadly truth somehow calms him down, blots out what he feels so awkward to remember. After all, what importance do their own, private experiences hold when such a monstrosity is in the offing? When Waterloo begins, there’ll be nothing left, no recollections, no minds to keep them, and no logs of their exploits, which Surgeon!Clive must now be having so much fun reading.

"Please don’t say that to the Temeraire guys, they’ll stop liking you," Bush grumbles and suddenly beams up with a long-suppressed smile. "Well, unless you really don’t want to work in our team?"

It takes HNelsonH some moments to fully register the true implications of Bush’s words. Then he waits some more to command his voice to sound composed and reasonable.

"I’ll think about it."

But first, before he makes the final decision, he’ll have to see that the logs of their trip together are indeed erased from Clive’s system.


End file.
